A strong, well-informed search engine optimization (SEO) strategy helps drive more attention to your business through organic search. However, it takes time for an SEO strategy to really show you the results that you are looking for. Business owners often have a difficult time understanding how long this takes or what they should be looking for. The answer to these questions is: it depends.
It depends on the SEO strategy that was previously in place. It depends on what a business wants to rank for. It depends on the competition in the industry. There are quite a few considerations that factor into verifying whether or not your SEO strategy is truly working.
Is My SEO Working?
While it can be difficult to get a full picture of how well your SEO strategy is performing, there are some metrics that you can keep an eye on to help guide your current and future decision-making for your SEO.
Organic traffic
A good, well-informed SEO strategy helps to drive traffic to your business’ site as people search for queries that are related to your business and find you through Google’s search engine results page (SERP). An organic search strategy that is built on a foundation of well-researched keywords is a great place to start developing your SEO strategy.
Implementing these keywords throughout your site in various means will put your business in a prime position to be found through organic search. Prospective customers that find you through Google help drive your business’ credibility. The more that they engage with your site in ways that they find relevant to their interests, the more credibility you obtain.
SERP Visibility
One of the main reasons for focusing on strengthening your site’s SEO, over time, is to increase your site’s visibility on the search engine results page (SERP). When a prospective customer searches for specific queries that are related to your industry or business, you want to be front and center. More often than not, people will gravitate to most of the links that are on the first page.
The way that you can best improve these chances are to get the most visibility through Google or Bing’s search engine results pages. The closer you are to page 1, the more likely it is that someone that sees your business will further engage with your website or company. And with the amount of space that is dedicated to paid ads, it’s even harder to get screen real estate in the SERP.
Featured Snippets
A big part of SERP visibility is that your company is, in fact, easily visible. Featured snippets aid in this as they are Google’s way of putting a piece – or “snippet” – of your website atop the SERP to serve in the best interest of those who are searching for things that are related to your business or industry.
Once your website has been marked up with Schema, you will increase your site’s chances of Google providing a featured snippet in the SERP to quickly answer questions, or provide information related to the users’ search query. Schema is code or data that you place on your website to help search engines serve more informative results for users. Google can award a featured snippet to a website that it sees as reliable or trustworthy; however, adding schema increases your chances. This is a result of taking the extra step of ensuring that you’re using your SEO strategy to make sure to enhance your business’ visibility.
Engagement
In addition to organic traffic, an SEO strategy helps boost your site’s engagement metrics – not only traffic to your site but also time spent on the various site pages and bounce rate.
You want to see an increase in users’ time spent on your page due to its relevance to their search queries. While it’s great to have your site show up in the SERP, it’s even more important that the content on the page is close to, or exactly, what they want to see. A low bounce rate backs this up, as it tells you that people aren’t leaving after immediately visiting a page on your site.
These metrics help put into perspective how much your SEO strategy is really working to drive traffic to your site. It paints a complete picture of their journey from entering a search query into Google or Bing to how they go on to engage with your site.
Keyword Rankings
Keyword rankings are a great way to dig down into the “Why” of your on-site SEO as you further develop your strategy. Using your keyword rankings, you’ll understand your business’ place in its industry. If your SEO strategy works as intended, you will see the keyword rankings for your search terms increase over time.
This increase happens through constant and consistent implementation – whether through on-site copy or blogs – of the main keywords that you want your business to rank for in your industry. Getting more familiar with how your keywords are ranking will lead to you getting a better picture of your SEO strategy’s effectiveness.
Let Us Help You With SEO
There are many metrics and data points that you can use to understand the success of your search engine optimization strategy. These can often be overwhelming for a business owner during the early stages. However, over time as your data is collected, this will paint a clear picture of the successes of your SEO plan.
If you need help developing a successful search engine optimization strategy, reach out to us! We have been providing and executing strategic digital marketing plans for our clients for over ten years, and we’d love to get to know your business.
